BANCROFT 

LIBRARY 

<• 

THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


CAMPING  WITH 
PRESIDENT  ROOSEVELT 

BY  JOHN  BURROUGHS 


(UGHTON,  MFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 


*•-''''  *'a   -'    •'—-  •  •-'i-  'LiTi- 


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CAMPING  WITH 
PRESIDENT  ROOSEVELT 

BY   JOHN  BURROUGHS 


HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 


xf  X 


COPYRIGHT,  1906 
BY  HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 


Reprinted  from 

The  Atlantic  Monthly 

May,  IQ06 


CAMPING  WITH 
PRESIDENT  ROOSEVELT 

BY  JOHN  BURROUGHS 

AT  the  time  I  made  the  trip  to  Yellowstone  Park 
with  President  Roosevelt  in  the  spring  of  1903,  I 
promised  some  friends  to  write  up  my  impressions 
of  the  President  and  of  the  Park,  but  I  have  been 
slow  in  getting  around  to  it.  The  President  himself, 
having  the  absolute  leisure  and  peace  of  the  White 
House,  wrote  his  account  of  the  trip  nearly  two 
years  ago !  But  with  the  stress  and  strain  of  my  life 
at  "  Slabsides,"  —  administering  the  affairs  of  so 
many  of  the  wild  creatures  of  the  woods  about  me, 
—  I  have  not  till  this  blessed  season  found  the  time 
to  put  on  record  an  account  of  the  most  interesting 
thing  I  saw  in  that  wonderful  land,  which,  of  course, 
was  the  President  himself. 

A  STORM  CENTRE 

When  I  accepted  his  invitation  I  was  well  aware 
that  during  the  journey  I  should  be  in  a  storm  centre 
most  of  the  time,  which  is  not  always  a  pleasant 

1 


YViA)l  LilJ    1  l|l 

prospect  to  a  man  of  my  habits  and  disposition. 
The  President  himself  is  a  good  deal  of  a  storm,  — 
a  man  of  such  abounding  energy  and  ceaseless 
activity  that  he  sets  everything  in  motion  around 
him  wherever  he  goes.  But  I  knew  he  would  be 
pretty  well  occupied  on  his  way  to  the  Park  in 
speaking  to  eager  throngs  and  in  receiving  personal 
and  political  homage  in  the  towns  and  cities  we 
were  to  pass  through.  But  when  all  this  was  over, 
and  I  found  myself  with  him  in  the  wilderness  of 
the  Park,  with  only  the  superintendent  and  a  few 
attendants  to  help  take  up  his  tremendous  personal 
impact,  how  was  it  likely  to  fare  with  a  non-strenu- 
ous person  like  myself,  I  asked?  I  had  visions  of 
snow  six  and  seven  feet  deep  where  traveling  could 
be  done  only  upon  snowshoes,  and  I  had  never 
had  the  things  on  my  feet  in  my  life.  If  the  infernal 
fires  beneath,  that  keep  the  pot  boiling  so  out  there, 
should  melt  the  snows,  I  could  see  the  party  tearing 
along  on  horseback  at  a  wolf -hunt  pace  over  a  rough 
country;  and  as  I  had  not  been  on  a  horse's  back 
since  the  President  was  born,  how  would  it  be  likely 
to  fare  with  me  there? 

THE  PRESIDENT'S  INTEREST  IN  NATURAL  HISTORY 

I  had  known  the  President  several  years  before 
he  became  famous,  and  we  had  had  some  corre- 
spondence on  subjects  of  natural  history.  His  inter- 
est in  such  themes  is  always  very  fresh  and  keen. 


and  the  main  motive  of  his  visit  to  the  Park  at  this 
time  was  to  see  and  study  in  its  semi-domesticated 
condition  the  great  game  which  he  had  so  often 
hunted  during  his  ranch  days;  and  he  was  kind 
enough  to  think  it  would  be  an  additional  pleasure 
to  see  it  with  a  nature-lover  like  myself.  For  my 
own  part,  I  knew  nothing  about  big  game,  but  I 
knew  there  was  no  man  in  the  country  with  whom 
I  should  so  like  to  see  it  as  Roosevelt. 

HIS   LOVE   OF   ANIMALS 

Some  of  our  newspapers  reported  that  the  Presi- 
dent intended  to  hunt  in  the  Park.  A  woman  in 
Vermont  wrote  me,  to  protest  against  the  hunting, 
and  hoped  I  would  teach  the  President  to  love  the 
animals  as  much  as  I  did,  —  as  if  he  did  not  love 
them  much  more,  because  his  love  is  founded 
upon  knowledge,  and  because  they  had  been  a  part 
of  his  life.  She  did  not  know  that  I  was  then  cher- 
ishing the  secret  hope  that  I  might  be  allowed  to 
shoot  a  cougar  or  bobcat;  but  this  fun  did  not 
come  to  me.  The  President  said,  "  I  will  not  fire  a 
gun  in  the  Park;  then  I  shall  have  no  explanations 
to  make."  Yet  once  I  did  hear  him  say  in  the  wil- 
derness, "  I  feel  as  if  I  ought  to  keep  the  camp  in 
meat.  I  always  have."  I  regretted  that  he  could  not 
do  so  on  this  occasion. 

I  have  never  been  disturbed  by  the  President's 
hunting  trips.  It  is  to  such  men  as  he  that  the  big 

3 


game  legitimately  belongs,  —  men  who  regard  it 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  naturalist  as  well  as 
from  that  of  the  sportsman,  who  are  interested  in 
its  preservation,  and  who  share  with  the  world  the 
delight  they  experience  in  the  chase.  Such  a  hunter 
as  Roosevelt  is  as  far  removed  from  the  game- 
butcher  as  day  is  from  night;  and  as  for  his  killing 
of  the  "  varmints,"  —  bears,  cougars,  and  bobcats, 

—  the  fewer  of  these  there  are,  the  better  for  the 
useful  and  beautiful  game. 

The  cougars,  or  mountain  lions,  in  the  Park  cer- 
tainly needed  killing.  The  superintendent  reported 
that  he  had  seen  where  they  had  slain  nineteen  elk, 
and  we  saw  where  they  had  killed  a  deer,  and 
dragged  its  body  across  the  trail.  Of  course,  the 
President  would  not  now  on  his  hunting  trips  shoot 
an  elk  or  a  deer  except  to  "  keep  the  camp  in  meat," 
and  for  this  purpose  it  is  as  legitimate  as  to  slay  a 
sheep  or  a  steer  for  the  table  at  home. 

We  left  Washington  on  April  1,  and  strung  several 
of  the  larger  Western  cities  on  our  thread  of  travel, 

—  Chicago,  Milwaukee,  Madison,  St.  Paul,  Min- 
neapolis, —  as  well  as  many  lesser  towns,  in  each 
of  which  the  President  made  an  address,  sometimes 
brief,  on  a  few  occasions  of  an  hour  or  more. 

MEETING  THE   PEOPLE 

He  gave  himself  very  freely  and  heartily  to  the 
people  wherever  he  went.  He  could  easily  match 

4 


their  Western  cordiality  and  good-fellowship.  Wher- 
ever his  train  stopped,  crowds  soon  gathered,  or  had 
already  gathered,  to  welcome  him.  His  advent 
made  a  holiday  in  each  town  he  visited.  At  all  the 
principal  stops  the  usual  programme  was:  first, 
his  reception  by  the  committee  of  citizens  appointed 
to  receive  him, — they  usually  boarded  his  private 
car,  and  were  one  by  one  introduced  to  him;  then 
a  drive  through  the  town  with  a  concourse  of  car- 
riages; then  to  the  hall  or  open  air  platform,  where 
he  spoke  to  the  assembled  throng;  then  to  lunch 
or  dinner;  and  then  back  to  the  train,  and  off  for 
the  next  stop  —  a  round  of  hand-shaking,  carriage- 
driving,  speech-making  each  day.  He  usually  spoke 
from  eight  to  ten  times  every  twenty-four  hours, 
sometimes  for  only  a  few  minutes  from  the  rear 
platform  of  his  private  car,  at  others  for  an  hour 
or  more  in  some  large  hall.  In  Chicago,  Milwaukee, 
and  St.  Paul,  elaborate  banquets  were  given  him 
and  his  party,  and  on  each  occasion  he  delivered 
a  carefully  prepared  speech  upon  questions  that 
involved  the  policy  of  his  administration.  The 
,  throng  that  greeted  him  in  the  vast  Auditorium  in 
Chicago  —  that  rose  and  waved  and  waved  again  — 
was  one  of  the  grandest  human  spectacles  I  ever 
witnessed. 

In  Milwaukee  the  dense  cloud  of  tobacco  smoke 
that  presently  filled  the  large  hall  after  the  feasting 
was  over  was  enough  to  choke  any  speaker,  but  it 

5 


did  not  seem  to  choke  the  President,  though  he 
does  not  use  tobacco  in  any  form  himself;  nor  was 
there  anything  foggy  about  his  utterances  on  that 
occasion  upon  legislative  control  of  the  trusts. 

A   PRETTY   INCIDENT 

In  St.  Paul  the  city  was  inundated  with  human- 
ity, —  a  vast  human  tide  that  left  the  middle  of 
the  streets  bare  as  our  line  of  carriages  moved 
slowly  along,  but  that  rose  up  in  solid  walls  of  town 
and  prairie  humanity  on  the  sidewalks  and  city 
dooryards.  How  hearty  and  happy  the  myriad 
faces  looked !  At  one  point  I  spied  in  the  throng 
on  the  curbstone  a  large  silk  banner  that  bore  my 
own  name  as  the  title  of  some  society.  I  presently 
saw  that  it  was  borne  by  half  a  dozen  anxious 
and  expectant-looking  schoolgirls  with  braids  down 
their  backs.  As  my  carriage  drew  near  them,  they 
pressed  their  way  through  the  throng,  and  threw 
a  large  bouquet  of  flowers  into  my  lap.  I  think 
it  would  be  hard  to  say  who  blushed  the  deeper, 
the  girls  or  myself.  It  was  the  first  time  I  had  ever 
had  flowers  showered  upon  me  in  public;  and  then, 
maybe,  I  felt  that  on  such  an  occasion  I  was  only 
a  minor  side  issue,  and  public  recognition  was  not 
called  for.  But  the  incident  pleased  the  President. 
"I  saw  that  banner  and  those  flowers,"  he  said 
afterwards ;  "  and  I  was  delighted  to  see  you  hon- 
ored that  way."  But  I  fear  I  have  not  to  this  day 

6 


°«  c 


•f 

53 

s! 

•<  s 


S    « 
a  ^ 


I! 


thanked  the  Monroe  School  of  St.  Paul  for  that 
pretty  attention. 

GRATIFYING   THE   CHILDREN 

The  time  of  the  passing  of  the  presidential  train 
seemed  well  known,  even  on  the  Dakota  prairies. 
At  one  point  I  remember  a  little  brown  schoolhouse 
stood  not  far  off,  and  near  the  track  the  school- 
ma'am,  with  her  flock,  drawn  up  in  line.  We  were 
at  luncheon,  but  the  President  caught  a  glimpse 
ahead  through  the  window,  and  quickly  took  in  the 
situation.  With  napkin  in  hand,  he  rushed  out  on 
the  platform  and  waved  to  them.  "Those  chil- 
dren," he  said,  as  he  came  back,  "wanted  to  see  the 
President  of  the  United  States,  and  I  could  not 
disappoint  them.  They  may  never  have  another 
chance.  What  a  deep  impression  such  things  make 
when  we  are  young!" 

COWBOY   FRIENDS 

At  some  point  in  the  Dakotas  we  picked  up  the 
former  foreman  of  his  ranch,  and  another  cowboy 
friend  of  the  old  days,  and  they  rode  with  the  Presi- 
dent in  his  private  car  for  several  hours.  He  was  as 
happy  with  them  as  a  schoolboy  ever  was  in  meet- 
ing old  chums.  He  beamed  with  delight  all  over. 
The  life  which  those  men  represented,  and  of  which 
he  had  himself  once  formed  a  part,  meant  so  much 
to  him ;  it  had  entered  into  the  very  marrow  of  his 

7 


being,  and  I  could  see  the  joy  of  it  all  shining  in  his 
face  as  he  sat  and  lived  parts  of  it  over  again  with 
those  men  that  day.  He  bubbled  with  laughter 
continually.  The  men,  I  thought,  seemed  a  little 
embarrassed  by  his  open-handed  cordiality  and 
good-fellowship.  He  himself  evidently  wanted  to 
forget  the  present,  and  to  live  only  in  the  memory 
of  those  wonderful  ranch  days,  —  that  free,  hardy, 
adventurous  life  upon  the  plains.  It  all  came  back 
to  him  with  a  rush  when  he  found  himself  alone 
with  these  heroes  of  the  rope  and  the  stirrup,  How 
much  more  keen  his  appreciation  was,  and  how 
much  quicker  his  memory,  than  theirs!  He  was 
constantly  recalling  to  their  minds  incidents  which 
they  had  forgotten,  and  the  names  of  horses  and 
dogs  which  had  escaped  them.  His  subsequent  life, 
instead  of  making  dim  the  memory  of  his  ranch 
days,  seemed  to  have  made  it  more  vivid  by  contrast. 

When  they  ha^  gone,  I  said  to  him,  "I  think 
your  affection  for  those  men  very  beautiful." 

"How  could  I  help  it?"  he  said. 

"  Still,  few  men  in  your  station  could  or  would 
go  back  and  renew  such  friendships." 

"  Then  I  pity  them,"  he  replied. 

RANCH    LIFE    THE   MAKING   OF   HIM 

He  said  afterwards  that  his  ranch  life  had  been 
the  making  of  him.  It  had  built  him  up  and  hard- 
ened him  physically,  and  it  had  opened  his  eyes  to 

8 


the  wealth  of  manly  character  among  the  plains- 
men and  cattlemen. 

Had  he  not  gone  West,  he  said,  he  never  would 
have  raised  the  Rough  Riders  Regiment;  and  had 
he  not  raised  that  regiment  and  gone  to  the  Cuban 
War,  he  would  not  have  been  made  governor  of 
New  York;  and  had  not  this  happened,  the  poli- 
ticians would  not  unwittingly  have  made  his  rise  to 
the  Presidency  so  inevitable.  There  is  no  doubt, 
I  think,  that  he  would  have  got  there  some  day; 
but  without  the  chain  of  events  above  outlined,  his 
rise  could  not  have  been  so  rapid. 

Our  train  entered  the  Bad  Lands  of  North 
Dakota  in  the  early  evening  twilight,  and  the  Presi- 
dent stood  on  the  rear  platform  of  his  car,  gazing 
wistfully  upon  the  scene.  "  I  know  all  this  country 
like  a  book,"  he  said.  "  I  have  ridden  over  it,  and 
hunted  over  it,  and  tramped  over  it,  in  all  seasons 
and  weather,  and  it  looks  like  home  to  me.  My  old 
ranch  is  not  far  off.  We  shall  soon  reach  Medora, 
which  was  my  station."  It  was  plain  to  see  that  that 
strange,  forbidding-looking  landscape,  hills  and 
valleys  to  Eastern  eyes  utterly  demoralized  and 
gone  to  the  bad,  - —  flayed,  fantastic,  treeless,  a  riot 
of  naked  clay  slopes,  chimney-like  buttes,  and  dry 
coulees,  —  was  in  his  eyes  a  land  of  almost  pathetic 
interest.  There  were  streaks  of  good  pasturage 
here  and  there  where  his  cattle  used  to  graze,  and 
where  the  deer  and  the  pronghorn  used  to  linger. 
9 


OLD   NEIGHBORS 

When  we  reached  Medora,  where  the  train  was 
scheduled  to  stop  an  hour,  it  was  nearly  dark,  but 
the  whole  town  and  country  round  had  turned  out 
to  welcome  their  old  townsman.  After  much  hand- 
shaking, the  committee  conducted  us  down  to  a 
little  hall,  where  the  President  stood  on  a  low  plat- 
form, and  made  a  short  address  to  the  standing 
crowd  that  filled  the  place.  Then  some  flashlight 
pictures  were  taken  by  the  local  photographer,  after 
which  the  President  stepped  down,  and,  while  the 
people  filed  past  him,  shook  hands  with  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  of  them,  calling  many  of  them 
by  name,  and  greeting  them  all  most  cordially.  I 
recall  one  grizzled  old  frontiersman  whose  hand 
he  grasped,  calling  him  by  name,  and  saying,  "  How 
well  I  remember  you!  You  once  mended  my  gun- 
lock  for  me,  —  put  on  a  new  hammer."  "  Yes," 
said  the  delighted  old  fellow;  "I'm  the  man,  Mr. 
President."  He  was  among  his  old  neighbors  once 
more,  and  the  pleasure  of  the  meeting  was  very  ob- 
vious on  both  sides.  I  heard  one  of  the  women  tell 
him  they  were  going  to  have  a  dance  presently,  and 
ask  him  if  he  would  not  stay  and  open  it !  The  Pre- 
sident laughingly  excused  himself,  and  said  his  train 
had  to  leave  on  schedule  time,  and  his  time  was 
nearly  up.  I  thought  of  the  incident  in  his  "  Ranch 
Life,"  in  which  he  says  he  once  opened  a  cowboy 
10 


ball  with  the  wife  of  a  Minnesota  man,  who  had 
recently  shot  a  bullying  Scotchman  who  danced 
opposite.  He  says  the  scene  reminded  him  of  the 
ball  where  Bret  Harte's  heroine  "went  down  the 
middle  with  the  man  that  shot  Sandy  Magee." 

Before  reaching  Medora  he  had  told  me  many 
anecdotes  of  "Hell  Roaring  Bill  Jones,"  and  had 
said  I  should  see  him.  But  it  turned  out  that  Hell 
Roaring  Bill  had  begun  to  celebrate  the  coming  of 
the  President  too  early  in  the  day,  and  when  we 
reached  Medora  he  was  not  in  a  presentable  con- 
dition. I  forget  now  how  he  had  earned  his  name, 
but  no  doubt  he  had  come  honestly  by  it;  it  was 
a  part  of  his  history,  as  was  that  of  "The  Pike," 
"Cold  Turkey  Bill,"  "Hash  Knife  Joe,"  and  other 
classic  heroes  of  the  frontier. 

BAD   LANDS   AND   BAD   MEN 

It  is  curious  how  certain  things  go  to  the  bad  in 
the  Far  West,  or  a  certain  proportion  of  them,  — 
bad  lands,  bad  horses,  and  bad  men.  And  it  is  a 
degree  of  badness  that  the  East  has  no  conception 
of,  —  land  that  looks  as  raw  and  unnatural  as  if 
time  had  never  laid  its  shaping  and  softening  hand 
upon  it;  horses  that,  when  mounted,  put  their  heads 
to  the  ground  and  their  heels  in  the  air,  and,  squeal- 
ing defiantly,  resort  to  the  most  diabolically  ingen- 
ious tricks  to  shake  off  or  to  kill  their  riders ;  and 
men  who  amuse  themselves  in  bar-rooms  by  shoot- 
11 


ing  about  the  feet  of  a  "tenderfoot"  to  make  him 
dance,  or  who  ride  along  the  street  and  shoot  at 
every  one  in  sight.  Just  as  the  old  plutonic  fires 
come  to  the  surface  out  there  in  the  Rockies,  and 
hint  very  strongly  of  the  infernal  regions,  so  a  kind 
of  satanic  element  in  men  and  animals  —  an  un- 
derlying devilishness  —  crops  out,  and  we  have  the 
border  ruffian  and  the  bucking  broncho. 

The  President  told  of  an  Englishman  on  a  hunt- 
ing trip  in  the  West,  who,  being  an  expert  horse- 
man at  home,  scorned  the  idea  that  he  could  not 
ride  any  of  their  "  grass-fed  ponies."  So  they  gave 
him  a  bucking  broncho.  He  was  soon  lying  on  the 
ground,  much  stunned.  When  he  could  speak,  he 
said,  "I  should  not  have  minded  him,  you  know, 
but  'e  'ides  'is  'ead" 

THE  PRESIDENT'S  CORDIALITY 

At  one  place  in  Dakota  the  train  stopped  to  take 
water  while  we  were  at  lunch.  A  crowd  soon  gath- 
ered, and  the  President  went  out  to  greet  them. 
We  could  hear  his  voice,  and  the  cheers  and  laugh- 
ter of  the  crowd.  And  then  we  heard  him  say,  "  Well, 
good-by,  I  must  go  now."  Still  he  did  not  come. 
Then  we  heard  more  talking  and  laughing,  and  an- 
other "good-by,"  and  yet  he  did  not  come.  Then 
I  went  out  to  see  what  had  happened.  I  found  the 
President  down  on  the  ground  shaking  hands  with 
the  whole  lot  of  them.  Some  one  had  reached  up  to 
12 


shake  his  hand  as  he  was  about  withdrawing,  and 
this  had  been  followed  by  such  eagerness  on  the 
part  of  the  rest  of  the  people  to  do  likewise,  that  the 
President  had  instantly  got  down  to  gratify  them. 
Had  the  secret  service  men  known  it,  they  would 
have  been  in  a  pickle.  We  probably  have  never  had 
a  President  who  responded  more  freely  and  heartily 
to  the  popular  liking  for  him  than  Roosevelt.  The 
crowd  always  seem  to  be  in  love  with  him  the  moment 
they  see  him  and  hear  his  voice.  And  it  is  not  by 
reason  of  any  arts  of  eloquence,  or  charm  of  address, 
but  by  reason  of  his  inborn  heartiness  and  sincerity, 
and  his  genuine  manliness.  The  people  feel  his  qual- 
ity at  once.  In  Bermuda  last  winter  I  met  a  Catho- 
lic priest  who  had  sat  on  the  platform  at  some  place 
in  New  England  very  near  the  President  while  he 
was  speaking,  and  who  said,  "The  man  had  not 
spoken  three  minutes  before  I  loved  him,  and  had 
any  one  tried  to  molest  him,  I  could  have  torn  him 
to  pieces."  It  is  the  quality  in  the  man  that  instantly 
inspires  such  a  liking  as  this  in  strangers  that  will, 
I  am  sure,  safeguard  him  in  all  public  places. 

I  once  heard  him  say  that  he  did  not  like  to  be  ad- 
dressed as  "His  Excellency;"  he  added  laughingly, 
"  They  might  just  as  well  call  me  His  Transparency, 
for  all  I  care."  It  is  this  transparency,  this  direct, 
out-and-out,  unequivocal  character  of  him  that  is 
one  source  of  his  popularity.  The  people  do  love 
transparency, — all  of  them  but  the  politicians. 
13 


A  friend  of  his  one  day  took  him  to  task  for  some 
mistake  he  had  made  in  one  of  his  appointments. 
"  My  dear  sir,"  replied  the  President,  "  where  you 
know  of  one  mistake  I  have  made,  I  know  of  ten." 
How  such  candor  must  make  the  politicians  shiver ! 

THE   MULE-TEAM 

I  have  said  that  I  stood  in  dread  of  the  necessity 
of  snowshoeing  in  the  Park,  and,  in  lieu  of  that, 
of  horseback  riding.  Yet  when  we  reached  Gardi- 
ner, the  entrance  to  the  Park,  on  that  bright,  crisp 
April  morning,  with  no  snow  in  sight  save  that  on 
the  mountain-tops,  and  found  Major  Pitcher  and 
Captain  Chittenden  at  the  head  of  a  squad  of  sol- 
diers, with  a  fine  saddle-horse  for  the  President,  and 
an  ambulance  drawn  by  two  span  of  mules  for  me, 
I  confess  that  I  experienced  just  a  slight  shade  of 
mortification.  I  thought  they  might  have  given  me 
the  option  of  the  saddle  or  the  ambulance.  Yet  I 
entered  the  vehicle  as  if  it  was  just  what  I  had  been 
expecting. 

The  President  and  his  escort,  with  a  cloud  of 
cowboys  hovering  in  the  rear,  were  soon  off  at  a 
lively  pace,  and  my  ambulance  followed  close,  and 
at  a  lively  pace,  too ;  so  lively  that  I  soon  found  my- 
self gripping  the  seat  with  my  hands.  "Well,"  I 
said  to  myself,  "  they  are  giving  me  a  regular  West- 
ern send-off;"  and  I  thought,  as  the  ambulance 
swayed  from  side  to  side,  that  it  would  suit  me  just 
14 


as  well  if  my  driver  did  not  try  to  keep  up  with  the 
presidential  procession.  The  driver  and  his  mules 
were  shut  off  from  me  by  a  curtain,  but,  looking 
ahead  out  of  the  sides  of  the  vehicle,  I  saw  two 
good-sized  logs  lying  across  our  course.  Surely,  I 
thought  (and  barely  had  time  to  think),  he  will 
avoid  these.  But  he  did  not,  and  as  we  passed  over 
them  I  was  nearly  thrown  through  the  top  of  the 
ambulance.  "  This  is  a  lively  send-off,"  I  said,  rub- 
bing my  bruises  with  one  hand,  while  I  clung  to  the 
seat  with  the  other.  Presently  I  saw  the  cowboys 
scrambling  up  the  bank  as  if  to  get  out  of  our  way; 
then  the  President  on  his  fine  gray  stallion  scram- 
bling up  the  bank  with  his  escort,  and  looking  omi- 
nously in  my  direction,  as  we  thundered  by. 

SIDETRACKING   THE   PRESIDENT 

"Well,"  I  said,  "this  is  indeed  a  novel  ride;  for 
once  in  my  life  I  have  sidetracked  the  President  of 
the  United  States !  I  am  given  the  right  of  way  over 
all."  On  we  tore,  along  the  smooth,  hard  road,  and 
did  not  slacken  our  pace  till,  at  the  end  of  a  mile  or 
two,  we  began  to  mount  the  hill  toward  Fort  Yel- 
lowstone. And  not  till  we  reached  the  fort  did  I 
learn  that  our  mules  had  run  away.  They  had  been 
excited  beyond  control  by  the  presidential  caval- 
cade, and  the  driver,  finding  he  could  not  hold  them, 
had  aimed  only  to  keep  them  in  the  road,  and  we 
very  soon  had  the  road  all  to  ourselves. 
15 


HUGE   BOILING   SPRINGS 

Fort  Yellowstone  is  at  Mammoth  Hot  Springs, 
where  one  gets  his  first  view  of  the  characteristic 
scenery  of  the  Park,  —  huge,  boiling  springs  with 
their  columns  of  vapor,  and  the  first  characteristic 
odors  which  suggest  the  traditional  infernal  regions 
quite  as  much  as  the  boiling  and  steaming  water 
does.  One  also  gets  a  taste  of  a  much  more  rarefied 
air  than  he  has  been  used  to,  and  finds  himself  pant- 
ing for  breath  on  a  very  slight  exertion.  The  Mam- 
moth Hot  Springs  have  built  themselves  up  an 
enormous  mound  that  stands  there  above  the  vil- 
lage on  the  side  of  the  mountain,  terraced  and  scal- 
loped and  fluted,  and  suggesting  some  vitreous 
formation,  or  rare  carving  of  enormous,  many-col- 
ored precious  stones.  It  looks  quite  unearthly,  and, 
though  the  devil's  frying  pan,  and  ink  pot,  and  the 
Stygian  caves  are  not  far  off,  the  suggestion  is  of 
something  celestial  rather  than  of  the  nether  re- 
gions, —  a  vision  of  jasper  walls,  and  of  amethyst 
battlements. 

With  Captain  Chittenden  I  climbed  to  the  top, 
stepping  over  the  rills  and  creeks  of  steaming  hot 
water,  and  looked  at  the  marvelously  clear,  cerulean, 
but  boiling,  pools  on  the  summit.  The  water  seemed 
as  unearthly  in  its  beauty  and  purity  as  the  gigan- 
tic sculpturing  that  held  it. 


16 


FORT    YELLOWSTONE. 

From  stereograph,  copyright  1904,  by  Underwood  &  Underwood,  New  York. 


THE   STYGIAN   CAVES 

The  Stygian  caves  are  still  farther  up  the  moun- 
tain, —  little  pockets  in  the  rocks,  or  well-holes  in 
the  ground  at  your  feet,  filled  with  deadly  carbon 
dioxide.  We  saw  birds'  feathers  and  quills  in  all  of 
them.  The  birds  hop  into  them,  probably  in  quest 
of  food  or  seeking  shelter,  and  they  never  come 
out.  We  saw  the  body  of  a  martin  on  the  bank  of 
one  hole.  Into  one  we  sank  a  lighted  torch,  and  it 
was  extinguished  as  quickly  as  if  we  had  dropped 
it  into  water.  Each  cave  or  niche  is  a  death  valley 
on  a  small  scale.  Near  by  we  came  upon  a  steam- 
ing pool,  or  lakelet,  of  an  acre  or  more  in  extent. 
A  pair  of  mallard  ducks  were  swimming  about  in 
one  end  of  it, — the  cool  end.  When  we  approached, 
they  swam  slowly  over  into  the  warmer  water.  As 
they  progressed,  the  water  got  hotter  and  hotter, 
and  the  ducks'  discomfort  was  evident.  Presently 
they  stopped,  and  turned  toward  us,  half  appeal- 
ing ly,  as  I  thought.  They  could  go  no  farther; 
would  we  please  come  no  nearer  ?  As  I  took  another 
step  or  two,  up  they  rose  and  disappeared  over  the 
hill.  Had  they  gone  to  the  extreme  end  of  the  pool, 
we  could  have  had  boiled  mallard  for  dinner. 

DEER   FEEDING   IN   THE   STREETS 

Another  novel  spectacle  was  at  night,  or  near 
sundown,  when  the  deer  came  down  from  the  hills 
17 


into  the  streets,  and  ate  hay  a  few  yards  from  the 
officers'  quarters,  as  unconcernedly  as  so  many 
domestic  sheep.  This  they  had  been  doing  all  win- 
ter, and  they  kept  it  up  till  May,  at  times  a  score  or 
more  of  them  profiting  thus  on  the  government's 
bounty.  When  the  sundown  gun  was  fired  a  couple 
of  hundred  yards  away,  they  gave  a  nervous  start, 
but  kept  on  with  their  feeding.  The  antelope  and 
elk  and  mountain  sheep  had  not  yet  grown  bold 
enough  to  accept  Uncle  Sam's  charity  in  that 
way. 

The  President  wanted  all  the  freedom  and  soli- 
tude possible  while  in  the  Park,  so  all  newspaper 
men  and  other  strangers  were  excluded.  Even  the 
secret  service  men  and  his  physician  and  private 
secretaries  were  left  at  Gardiner.  He  craved  once 
more  to  be  alone  with  nature;  he  was  evidently 
hungry  for  the  wild  and  the  aboriginal,  —  a  hunger 
that  seems  to  come  upon  him  regularly  at  least  once 
a  year,  and  drives  him  forth  on  his  hunting  trips 
for  big  game  in  the  West. 

We  spent  two  weeks  in  the  Park,  and  had  fair 
weather,  bright,  crisp  days,  and  clear,  freezing 
nights.  The  first  week  we  occupied  three  camps 
that  had  been  prepared,  or  partly  prepared,  for  us 
in  the  northeast  corner  of  the  Park,  in  the  region 
drained  by  the  Gardiner  River,  where  there  was 
but  little  snow,  and  which  we  reached  on  horse- 
back. 

18 


VISIT  TO   THE    GEYSER    REGION 

The  second  week  we  visited  the  geyser  region, 
which  lies  a  thousand  feet  or  more  higher,  and 
where  the  snow  was  still  five  or  six  feet  deep.  This 
part  of  the  journey  was  made  in  big  sleighs,  each 
drawn  by  two  span  of  horses. 

On  the  horseback  excursion,  which  involved 
only  about  fifty  miles  of  riding,  we  had  a  mule 
pack  train,  and  Sibley  tents  and  stoves,  with  quite 
a  retinue  of  camp  laborers,  a  lieutenant  and  an 
orderly  or  two,  and  a  guide,  Billy  Hofer. 

THE    FIRST   CAMP 

The  first  camp  was  in  a  wild,  rocky,  and  pictur- 
esque gorge  on  the  Yellowstone,  about  ten  miles 
from  the  fort.  A  slight  indisposition,  the  result  of 
luxurious  living,  with  no  wood  to  chop  or  to  saw, 
and  no  hills  to  climb,  as  at  home,  prevented  me 
from  joining  the  party  till  the  third  day.  Then  Cap- 
tain Chittenden  drove  me  eight  miles  in  a  buggy. 
About  two  miles  from  camp  we  came  to  a  picket  of 
two  or  three  soldiers,  where  my  big  bay  was  in 
waiting  for  me.  I  mounted  him  confidently,  and, 
guided  by  an  orderly,  took  the  narrow,  winding  trail 
toward  camp.  Except  for  an  hour's  riding  the  day 
before  with  Captain  Chittenden,  I  had  not  been  on 
a  horse's  back  for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  I  had  not 
spent  as  much  as  a  day  in  the  saddle  during  my 
19 


youth.  That  first  sense  of  a  live,  spirited,  powerful 
animal  beneath  you,  at  whose  mercy  you  are,  — 
you,  a  pedestrian  all  your  days,  —  with  gullies  and 
rocks  and  logs  to  cross,  and  deep  chasms  opening 
close  beside  you,  is  not  a  little  disturbing.  But  my 
big  bay  did  his  part  well,  and  I  did  not  lose  my 
head  or  my  nerve,  as  we  cautiously  made  our  way 
along  the  narrow  path  on  the  side  of  the  steep 
gorge,  with  a  foaming  torrent  rushing  along  at  its 
foot,  nor  yet  when  we  forded  the  rocky  and  rapid 
Yellowstone.  A  misstep  or  a  stumble  on  the  part 
of  my  steed,  and  probably  the  first  bubble  of  my 
confidence  would  have  been  shivered  at  once;  but 
this  did  not  happen,  and  in  due  time  we  reached 
the  group  of  tents  that  formed  the  President's  camp. 

THE   PRESIDENT   ALONE   IN   THE   WILDERNESS 

The  situation  was  delightful,  — no  snow,  scattered 
pine  trees,  a  secluded  valley,  rocky  heights,  and  the 
clear,  ample,  trouty  waters  of  the  Yellowstone.  The 
President  was  not  in  camp.  In  the  morning  he  had 
stated  his  wish  to  go  alone  into  the  wilderness. 
Major  Pitcher  very  naturally  did  not  quite  like  the 
idea,  and  wished  to  send  an  orderly  with  him. 

"  No,"  said  the  President.  "  Put  me  up  a  lunch, 
and  let  me  go  alone.  I  will  surely  come  back." 

And  back  he  surely  came.  It  was  about  five 
o'clock  when  he  came  briskly  down  the  path  from 
the  east  to  the  camp.  It  came  out  that  he  had 
20 


tramped  about  eighteen  miles  through  a  very  rough 
country.  The  day  before,  he  and  the  major  had 
located  a  band  of  several  hundred  elk  on  a  broad, 
treeless  hillside,  and  his  purpose  was  to  find  those 
elk,  and  creep  up  on  them,  and  eat  his  lunch  under 
their  very  noses.  And  this  he  did,  spending  an 
hour  or  more  within  fifty  yards  of  them.  He  came 
back  looking  as  fresh  as  when  he  started,  and  at 
night,  sitting  before  the  big  camp  fire,  related  his 
adventure,  and  talked  with  his  usual  emphasis  and 
copiousness  of  many  things.  He  told  me  of  the 
birds  he  had  seen  or  heard;  among  them  he  had 
heard  one  that  was  new  to  him.  From  his  descrip- 
tion I  told  him  I  thought  it  was  Townsend's  soli- 
taire, a  bird  I  much  wanted  to  see  and  hear.  I  had 
heard  the  West  India  solitaire,  —  one  of  the  most 
impressive  songsters  I  ever  heard,  —  and  I  wished 
to  compare  our  Western  form  with  it. 

A   STRANGE   BIRD   SONG 

The  next  morning  we  set  out  for  our  second  camp, 
ten  or  a  dozen  miles  away,  and  in  reaching  it  passed 
over  much  of  the  ground  the  President  had  trav- 
ersed the  day  before.  As  we  came  to  a  wild,  rocky 
place  above  a  deep  chasm  of  the  river,  with  a  few 
scattered  pine  trees,  the  President  said,  "It  was 
right  here  that  I  heard  that  strange  bird  song."  We 
paused  a  moment.  "And  there  it  is  now,"  he 
exclaimed. 

21 


THE    SOLITAIRE 

Sure  enough,  there  was  the  solitaire  singing  from 
the  top  of  a  small  cedar,  —  a  bright,  animated, 
eloquent  song,  but  without  the  richness  and  magic 
of  the  song  of  the  tropical  species.  We  hitched  our 
horses,  and  followed  the  bird  up  as  it  flew  from 
tree  to  tree.  The  President  was  as  eager  to  see  and 
hear  it  as  I  was.  It  seemed  very  shy,  and  we  only 
caught  glimpses  of  it.  In  form  and  color  it  much 
resembles  its  West  India  cousin,  and  suggests  our 
catbird.  It  ceased  to  sing  when  we  pursued  it.  It 
is  a  bird  found  only  in  the  wilder  and  higher  parts 
of  the  Rockies.  My  impression  was  that  its  song  did 
not  quite  merit  the  encomiums  that  have  been 
pronounced  upon  it. 

At  this  point,  I  saw  amid  the  rocks  my  first  and 
only  Rocky  Mountain  woodchucks,  and,  soon  after 
we  had  resumed  our  journey,  our  first  blue  grouse, 
—  a  number  of  them  like  larger  partridges.  Occa- 
sionally we  would  come  upon  black-tailed  deer, 
standing  or  lying  down  in  the  bushes,  their  large 
ears  at  attention  being  the  first  thing  to  catch  the 
eye.  They  would  often  allow  us  to  pass  within  a 
few  rods  of  them  without  showing  alarm.  Elk  horns 
were  scattered  all  over  this  part  of  the  Park,  and 
we  passed  several  old  carcasses  of  dead  elk  that  had 
probably  died  a  natural  death. 


22 


THE    YELLOWSTONE    RIVER   AND   CANYON. 

From  stereograph,  copyright  1904,  by  Underwood  &  Underwood,  New  York. 


In  a  grassy  bottom  at  the  foot  of  a  steep  hill,  while 
the  President  and  I  were  dismounted,  and  noting 
the  pleasing  picture  which  our  pack  train  of  fifteen 
or  twenty  mules  made  filing  along  the  side  of  a  steep 
grassy  slope,  —  a  picture  which  he  has  preserved  in 
his  late  volume,  "  Out-Door  Pastimes  of  an  Ameri- 
can Hunter,"  —  our  attention  was  attracted  by 
plaintive,  musical,  bird-like  chirps  that  rose  from 
the  grass  about  us.  I  was  almost  certain  it  was 
made  by  a  bird;  the  President  was  of  like  opinion; 
and  I  kicked  about  in  the  tufts  of  grass,  hoping  to 
flush  the  bird.  Now  here,  now  there,  arose  this 
sharp,  but  bird-like  note.  Finally  we  found  that  it 
was  made  by  a  species  of  gopher,  whose  holes  we 
soon  discovered.  What  its  specific  name  is  I  do  not 
know,  but  it  should  be  called  the  singing  gopher. 

Our  destination  this  day  was  a  camp  on  Cotton- 
wood  Creek,  near  "Hell  Roaring  Creek."  As  we 
made  our  way  in  the  afternoon  along  a  broad,  open, 
grassy  valley,  I  saw  a  horseman  come  galloping 
over  the  hill  to  our  right,  starting  up  a  band  of  elk 
as  he  came;  riding  across  the  plain,  he  wheeled  his 
horse,  and,  with  the  military  salute,  joined  our 
party.  He  proved  to  be  a  government  scout,  called 
the  "  Duke  of  Hell  Roaring,"  -  an  educated  officer 
from  the  Austrian  army,  who,  for  some  unknown 
reason,  had  exiled  himself  here  in  this  out-of-the- 
23 


way  part  of  the  world.  He  was  a  man  in  his  prime, 
of  fine,  military  look  and  bearing.  After  conversing 
a  few  moments  with  the  President  and  Major 
Pitcher,  he  rode  rapidly  away. 

THE   SECOND    CAMP 

Our  second  camp,  which  we  reached  in  mid- 
afternoon,  was  in  the  edge  of  the  woods  on  the 
banks  of  a  fine,  large  trout  stream,  where  ice  and 
snow  still  lingered  in  patches.  I  tried  for  trout  in 
the  head  of  a  large,  partly  open  pool,  but  did  not 
get  a  rise;  too  much  ice  in  the  stream,  I  concluded. 
Very  soon  my  attention  was  attracted  by  a  strange 
note,  or  call,  in  the  spruce  woods.  The  President 
had  also  noticed  it,  and,  with  me,  wondered  what 
made  it.  Was  it  bird  or  beast  ?  Billy  Hofer  said  he 
thought  it  was  an  owl,  but  it  in  no  way  suggested 
an  owl,  and  the  sun  was  shining  brightly.  It  was 
a  sound  such  as  a  boy  might  make  by  blowing  in 
the  neck  of  an  empty  bottle.  Presently  we  heard 
it  beyond  us  on  the  other  side  of  the  creek,  which 
was  pretty  good  proof  that  the  creature  had  wings. 

"  Let 's  go  run  that  bird  down,"  said  the  President 
to  me. 

So  off  we  started  across  a  small,  open,  snow- 
streaked  plain,  toward  the  woods  beyond  it.  We 
soon  decided  that  the  bird  was  on  the  top  of  one  of 
a  group  of  tall  spruces.  After  much  skipping  about 
over  logs  and  rocks,  and  much  craning  of  our  necks, 
24 


we  made  him  out  on  the  peak  of  a  spruce.  I  imi- 
tated his  call,  when  he  turned  his  head  down  toward 
us,  but  we  could  not  make  out  what  he  was. 

"  Why  did  we  not  think  to  bring  the  glasses  ?  " 
said  the  President. 

"  I  will  run  and  get  them,"  I  replied. 

TREEING   AN   OWL 

"  No,"  said  he,  "you  stay  here  and  keep  that  bird 
treed,  and  I  will  fetch  them." 

So  off  he  went  like  a  boy,  and  was  very  soon  back 
with  the  glasses.  We  quickly  made  out  that  it  was 
indeed  an  owl, — the  pigmy  owl,  as  it  turned  out, — 
not  much  larger  than  a  bluebird.  I  think  the  Presi- 
dent was  as  pleased  as  if  we  had  bagged  some  big 
game.  He  had  never  seen  the  bird  before. 

Throughout  the  trip  I  found  his  interest  in  bird 
life  very  keen,  and  his  eye  and  ear  remarkably 
quick.  He  usually  saw  the  bird  or  heard  its  note  as 
quickly  as  I  did,  —  and  I  had  nothing  else  to  think 
about,  and  had  been  teaching  my  eye  and  ear  the 
trick  of  it  for  over  fifty  years.  Of  course,  his  training 
as  a  big-game  hunter  stood  him  in  good  stead,  but 
back  of  that  were  his  naturalist's  instincts,  and  his 
genuine  love  of  all -forms  of  wild  life. 

• 

ROOSEVELT   THE   NATURALIST 

I  have  been  told  that  his  ambition  up  to  the  time 
he  went  to  Harvard  had  been  to  be  a  naturalist,  but 
25 


that  there  they  seem  to  have  convinced  him  that  all 
the  out-of-door  worlds  of  natural  history  had  been 
conquered,  and  that  the  only  worlds  remaining  were 
in  the  laboratory,  and  to  be  won  with  the  microscope 
and  the  scalpel.  But  Roosevelt  was  a  man  made 
for  action  in  a  wide  field,  and  laboratory  conquests 
could  not  satisfy  him.  His  instincts  as  a  naturalist, 
however,  lie  back  of  all  his  hunting  expeditions,  and, 
in  a  large  measure,  I  think,  prompt  them.  Certain 
it  is  that  his  hunting  records  contain  more  live 
natural  history  than  any  similar  records  known  to 
me,  unless  it  be  those  of  Charles  St.  John,  the  Scotch 
naturalist-sportsman. 

The  Canada  jays,  or  camp-robbers,  as  they  are 
often  called,  soon  found  out  our  camp  that  after- 
noon, and  no  sooner  had  the  cook  begun  to  throw 
out  peelings  and  scraps  and  crusts  than  the  jays 
began  to  carry  them  off,  not  to  eat,  as  I  observed, 
but  to  hide  them  in  the  thicker  branches  of  the 
spruce  trees.  How  tame  they  were,  coming  within 
three  or  four  yards  of  one!  Why  this  species  of 
jay  should  everywhere  be  so  familiar,  and  all  other 
kinds  so  wild,  is  a  puzzle. 

In  the  morning,  as  we  rode  down  the  valley 
toward  our  next  camping-place,  at  Tower  Falls,  a 
band  of  elk  containing  a  hundred  or  more  started 
along  the  side  of  the  hill  a  few  hundred  yards  away. 
I  was  some  distance  behind  the  rest  of  the  party, 
as  usual,  when  I  saw  the  President  wheel  his  horse 
26 


off  to  the  left,  and,  beckoning  to  me  to  follow,  start 
at  a  tearing  pace  on  the  trail  of  the  fleeing  elk.  He 
afterwards  told  me  that  he  wanted  me  to  get  a  good 
view  of  those  elk  at  dose  range,  and  he  was  afraid 
that  if  he  sent  the  major  or  Hofer  to  lead  me,  I 
would  not  get  it.  I  hurried  along  as  fast  as  I  could, 
which  was  not  fast;  the  way  was  rough,  —  logs, 
rocks,  spring  runs,  and  a  tenderfoot  rider. 

WILD  ELK 

Now  and  then  the  President,  looking  back  and 
seeing  what  slow  progress  I  was  maHngj  would 
beckon  to  me  impatiently,  and  I  could  fancy  him 
saying,  "  If  I  had  a  rope  around  him,  he  would  come 
faster  than  that!"  Once  or  twice  I  lost  sight  of  both 
him  and  the  elk;  the  altitude  was  great,  and  the 
horse  was  laboring  like  a  steam-engine  on  an  up- 
grade. Still  I  urged  him  on.  Presently,  as  I  broke 
over  a  hill,  I  saw  the  President  pressing  the  elk  up 
the  opposite  slope.  At  the  brow  of  the  hOl  he  stopped, 
and  I  soon  joined  him.  There  on  the  top,  not  fifty 
yards  away,  stood  the  elk  in  a  mass,  their  heads 
toward  us  and  their  tongues  hanging  out.  They 
could  run  no  farther.  The  President  laughed  Kke 
a  boy.  The  spectacle  meant  much  more  to  him  than 
it  did  to  me.  I  had  never  seen  a  wild  elk  nH  on  this 
trip,  but  they  had  been  among  the  notable  game 
that  he  had  hunted.  He  had  traveled  hundreds  of 
miles,  and  undergone  great  hardships,  to  get  within 
27 


rifle  range  of  these  creatures.  Now  here  stood  scores 
of  them,  with  lolling  tongues,  begging  for  mercy. 

After  gazing  at  them  to  our  hearts'  content,  we 
turned  away  to  look  up  our  companions,  who  were 
nowhere  within  sight.  We  finally  spied  them  a  mile 
or  more  away,  and,  joining  them,  all  made  our  way 
to  an  elevated  plateau  that  commanded  an  open 
landscape  three  or  four  miles  across.  It  was  high 
noon,  and  the  sun  shone  clear  and  warm.  From 
this  lookout  we  saw  herds  upon  herds  of  elk  scat- 
tered over  the  slopes  and  gentle  valleys  in  front  of 
us.  Some  were  grazing,  some  were  standing  or  ly- 
ing upon  the  ground,  or  upon  the  patches  of  snow. 
Through  our  glasses  we  counted  the  separate  bands, 
and  then  the  numbers  of  some  of  the  bands  or 
groups,  and  estimated  that  three  thousand  elk  were 
in  full  view  in  the  landscape  around  us.  It  was 
a  notable  spectacle.  Afterward,  in  Montana,  I 
attended  a  council  of  Indian  chiefs  at  one  of  the 
Indian  agencies,  and  told  them,  through  their 
interpreter,  that  I  had  been  with  the  Great  Chief 
in  the  Park,  and  of  the  game  we  had  seen.  When 
I  told  them  of  these  three  thousand  elk  all  in  view  at 
once,  they  grunted  loudly,  whether  with  satisfaction 
or  with  incredulity,  I  could  not  tell. 

In  the  midst  of  this  great  game  amphitheatre  we 
dismounted  and  enjoyed  the  prospect.  And  the  Pre- 
sident did  an  unusual  thing,  he  loafed  for  nearly  an 
hour, — stretched  himself  out  in  the  sunshine  upon 
28 


a  flat  rock,  as  did  the  rest  of  us,  and,  I  hope,  got  a 
few  winks  of  sleep.  I  am  sure  I  did.  Little,  slender, 
striped  chipmunks,  about  half  the  size  of  ours,  were 
scurrying  about;  but  I  recall  no  other  wild  thing  save 
the  elk. 

TOWER   FALLS 

From  here  we  rode  down  the  valley  to  our  third 
camp,  at  Tower  Falls,  stopping  on  the  way  to  eat 
our  luncheon  on  a  washed  boulder  beside  a  creek. 
On  this  ride  I  saw  my  first  and  only  badger;  he 
stuck  his  striped  head  out  of  his  hole  in  the  ground 
only  a  few  yards  away  from  us  as  we  passed. 

Our  camp  at  Tower  Falls  was  amid  the  spruces 
above  a  canon  of  the  Yellowstone,  five  or  six  hun- 
dred feet  deep.  It  was  a  beautiful  and  impressive 
situation,  —  shelter,  snugness,  even  cosiness,  — 
looking  over  the  brink  of  the  awful  and  the  terri- 
fying. With  a  run  and  a  jump  I  think  one  might 
have  landed  in  the  river  at  the  bottom  of  the  great 
abyss,  and  in  doing  so  might  have  scaled  one  of 
those  natural  obelisks  or  needles  of  rock  that  stand 
up  out  of  the  depths  two  or  three  hundred  feet  high. 
Nature  shows  you  what  an  enormous  furrow  her 
plough  can  open  through  the  strata  when  mowing 
horizontally,  at  the  same  time  that  she  shows  you 
what  delicate  and  graceful  columns  her  slower  and 
gentler  aerial  forces  can  carve  out  of  the  piled  strata. 
At  the  Falls  there  were  two  or  three  of  these  col- 
umns, like  the  picket-pins  of  the  elder  gods. 
29 


MOUNTAIN   SHEEP 

Across  the  canon  in  front  of  our  camp,  upon  a 
grassy  plateau  which  was  faced  by  a  wall  of  trap 
rock,  apparently  thirty  or  forty  feet  high,  a  band 
of  mountain  sheep  soon  attracted  our  attention. 
They  were  within  long  rifle  range,  but  were  not  at 
all  disturbed  by  our  presence,  nor  had  they  been 
disturbed  by  the  road-builders  who,  under  Captain 
Chittenden,  were  constructing  a  government  road 
along  the  brink  of  the  canon.  We  speculated  as  to 
whether  or  not  the  sheep  could  get  down  the  al- 
most perpendicular  face  of  the  chasm  to  the  river 
to  drink.  It  seemed  to  me  impossible.  Would  they 
try  it  while  we  were  there  to  see  ?  We  all  hoped  so ; 
and  sure  enough,  late  in  the  afternoon  the  word 
came  to  our  tents  that  the  sheep  were  coming  down. 
The  President,  with  coat  off  and  a  towel  around 
his  neck,  was  shaving.  One  side  of  his  face  was 
half  shaved,  and  the  other  side  lathered.  Hofer 
and  I  started  for  a  point  on  the  brink  of  the  canon 
where  we  could  have  a  better  view. 

"  By  Jove,"  said  the  President,  "  I  must  see  that. 
The  shaving  can  wait,  and  the  sheep  won't." 

WATCHING  THE   "  STUNT  " 

So  on  he  came,  accoutred  as  he  was,  —  coatless, 
hatless,  but  not  latherless,  nor  towelless.    Like  the 
rest  of  us,  his  only  thought  was  to  see  those  sheep 
30 


11 


55   ' 

C5 

- 


gfr 


do  their  "  stunt."  With  glasses  in  hand,  we  watched 
them  descend  those  perilous  heights,  leaping  from 
point  to  point,  finding  a  foothold  where  none  ap- 
peared to  our  eyes,  loosening  fragments  of  the  crum- 
bling rocks  as  they  came,  now  poised  upon  some 
narrow  shelf  and  preparing  for  the  next  leap,  zig- 
zagging or  plunging  straight  down  till  the  bottom 
was  reached,  and  not  one  accident  or  misstep  amid 
all  that  insecure  footing.  I  think  the  President 
was  the  most  pleased  of  us  all ;  he  laughed  with  the 
delight  of  it,  and  quite  forgot  his  need  of  a  hat  and 
coat  till  I  sent  for  them. 

In  the  night  we  heard  the  sheep  going  back;  we 
could  tell  by  the  noise  of  the  falling  stones.  In  the 
morning  I  confidently  expected  to  see  some  of  them 
lying  dead  at  the  foot  of  the  cliffs,  but  there  they  all 
were  at  the  top  once  more,  apparently  safe  and 
sound.  They  do,  however,  occasionally  meet  with 
accidents  in  their  perilous  climbing,  and  their  dead 
bodies  have  been  found  at  the  foot  of  the  rocks. 
Doubtless  some  point  of  rock  to  which  they  had 
trusted  gave  way,  and  crushed  them  in  the  descent, 
or  fell  upon  those  in  the  lead. 

TROUT   FISHING 

The  next  day,  while  the  rest  of  us  went  fishing 

for  trout  in  the  Yellowstone,  three  or  four  miles 

above  camp,  over  the  roughest  trail  that  we  had  yet 

traversed  on  horseback,  the  President,  who  never 

31 


fishes  unless  put  to  it  for  meat,  went  off  alone  again 
with  his  lunch  in  his  pocket,  to  stalk  those  sheep 
as  he  had  stalked  the  elk,  and  to  feel  the  old  sports- 
man's thrill  without  the  use  of  firearms.  To  do  this 
involved  a  tramp  of  eight  or  ten  miles  down  the  river 
to  a  bridge  and  up  the  opposite  bank.  This  he  did, 
and  ate  his  lunch  near  the  sheep,  and  was  back  in 
camp  before  we  were. 

We  took  some  large  cut-throat  trout,  as  they  are 
called,  from  the  yellow  mark  across  their  throats, 
and  I  saw  at  short  range  a  black-tailed  deer  bound- 
ing along  in  that  curious,  stiff-legged,  mechanical, 
yet  springy  manner,  apparently  all  four  legs  in  the 
air  at  once,  and  all  four  feet  reaching  the  ground 
at  once,  affording  a  very  singular  spectacle. 

RETURN  TO   FORT   YELLOWSTONE 

We  spent  two  nights  in  our  Tower  Falls  camp, 
and  on  the  morning  of  the  third  day  set  out  on  our 
return  to  Fort  Yellowstone,  pausing  at  Yancey's 
on  our  way,  and  exchanging  greetings  with  the  old 
frontiersman,  who  died  a  few  weeks  later. 

AROUND   THE  CAMP   FIRE 

While  in  camp  we  always  had  a  big  fire  at  night 
in  the  open  near  the  tents,  and  around  this  we 
sat  upon  logs  or  camp-stools,  and  listened  to  the 
President's  talk.  What  a  stream  of  it  he  poured 
forth!  and  what  a  varied  and  picturesque  stream! 
32 


—  anecdote,  history,  science,  politics,  adventure, 
literature;  bits  of  his  experience  as  a  ranchman, 
hunter,  Rough  Rider,  legislator,  Civil  Service  com- 
missioner, police  commissioner,  governor,  presi- 
dent, —  the  frankest  confessions,  the  most  telling 
criticisms,  happy  characterizations  of  prominent 
political  leaders,  or  foreign  rulers,  or  members  of 
his  own  Cabinet;  always  surprising  by  his  candor, 
astonishing  by  his  memory,  and  diverting  by  his 
humor.  His  reading  has  been  very  wide,  and  he 
has  that  rare  type  of  memory  which  retains  details 
as  well  as  mass  and  generalities.  One  night  some- 
thing started  him  off  on  ancient  history,  and  one 
would  have  thought  he  was  just  fresh  from  his  col- 
lege course  in  history,  the  dates  and  names  and 
events  came  so  readily.  Another  time  he  discussed 
palaeontology,  and  rapidly  gave  the  outlines  of  the 
science,  and  the  main  facts,  as  if  he  had  been  read- 
ing up  on  the  subject  that  very  day.  He  sees  things 
as  wholes,  and  hence  the  relation  of  the  parts  comes 
easy  to  him. 

At  dinner,  at  the  White  House,  the  night  before 
we  started  on  the  expedition,  I  heard  him  talking 
with  a  guest,  —  an  officer  of  the  British  army,  who 
was  just  back  from  India.  And  the  extent  and 
variety  of  his  information  about  India  and  Indian 
history  and  the  relations  of  the  British  govern- 
ment to  it  were  extraordinary.  It  put  the  British 
major  on  his  mettle  to  keep  pace  with  him. 
33 


THE   PRESIDENT  TELLING   STORIES 

One  night  in  camp  he  told  us  the  story  of  one  of 
his  Rough  Riders  who  had  just  written  him  from 
some  place  in  Arizona.  The  Rough  Riders,  wher- 
ever they  are  now,  look  to  him  in  time  of  trouble. 
This  one  had  come  to  grief  in  Arizona.  He  was  in 
jail.  So  he  wrote  the  President,  and  his  letter  ran 
something  like  this :  — 

"  DEAR  COLONEL,  —  I  am  in  trouble.  I  shot 
a  lady  in  the  eye,  but  I  did  not  intend  to  hit  the 
lady;  I  was  shooting  at  my  wife." 

And  the  presidential  laughter  rang  out  over  the 
treetops.  To  another  Rough  Rider,  who  was  in  jail, 
accused  of  horse  stealing,  he  had  loaned  two  hun- 
dred dollars  to  pay  counsel  on  his  trial,  and,  to  his 
surprise,  in  due  time  the  money  came  back.  The 
Ex-Rough  wrote  that  his  trial  never  came  off.  "  We 
elected  our  district  attorney  ;  "  and  the  laughter  again 
sounded,  and  drowned  the  noise  of  the  brook  near  by. 

On  another  occasion  we  asked  the  President  if 
he  was  ever  molested  by  any  of  the  "  bad  men  "  of 
the  frontier,  with  whom  he  had  often  come  in  con- 
tact. "Only  once,"  he  said.  The  cowboys  had 
always  treated  him  with  the  utmost  courtesy,  both 
on  the  round-up  and  in  camp;  "and  the  few  real 
desperadoes  I  have  seen  were  also  perfectly  polite." 
Once  only  was  he  maliciously  shot  at,  and  then  not 
by  a  cowboy  nor  a  bona  fide  "  bad  man,"  but  by  a 
34 


"broad-hatted  ruffian  of  a  cheap  and  common- 
place type."  He  had  been  compelled  to  pass  the 
night  at  a  little  frontier  hotel  where  the  bar-room 
occupied  the  whole  lower  floor,  and  was,  in  con- 
sequence, the  only  place  where  the  guests  of  the 
hotel,  whether  drunk  or  sober,  could  sit.  As  he 
entered  the  room,  he  saw  that  every  man  there  was 
being  terrorized  by  a  half-drunken  ruffian  who  stood 
in  the  middle  of  the  floor  with  a  revolver  in  each 
hand,  compelling  different  ones  to  treat. 

FLOORING   A   RUFFIAN 

"  I  went  and  sat  down  behind  the  stove,"  said  the 
President,  "as  far  from  him  as  I  could  get;  and 
hoped  to  escape  his  notice.  The  fact  that  I  wore 
glasses,  together  with  my  evident  desire  to  avoid 
a  fight,  apparently  gave  him  the  impression  that  I 
could  be  imposed  upon  with  impunity.  He  very 
soon  approached  me,  flourishing  his  two  guns,  and 
ordered  me  to  treat.  I  made  no  reply  for  some  mo- 
ments, when  the  fellow  became  so  threatening  that 
I  saw  something  had  to  be  done.  The  crowd,  mostly 
sheep-herders  and  small  grangers,  sat  or  stood  back 
against  the  wall,  afraid  to  move.  I  was  unarmed, 
and  thought  rapidly.  Saying,  'Well,  if  I  must,  I 
must/  I  got  up  as  if  to  walk  around  him  to  the 
bar,  then,  as  I  got  opposite  him,  I  wheeled  and 
fetched  him  as  heavy  a  blow  on  the  chin-point  as  I 
could  strike.  He  went  down  like  a  steer  before  the 
35 


axe,  firing  both  guns  into  the  ceiling  as  he  went.  I 
jumped  on  him,  and,  with  my  knees  on  his  chest, 
disarmed  him  in  a  hurry.  The  crowd  was  then 
ready  enough  to  help  me,  and  we  hog-tied  him  and 
put  him  in  an  outhouse."  The  President  alludes 
to  this  incident  in  his  "  Ranch  Life,"  but  does  not 
give  the  details.  It  brings  out  his  mettle  very 
distinctly. 

He  told  us  in  an  amused  way  of  the  attempts  of 
his  political  opponents  at  Albany,  during  his  early 
career  as  a  member  of  the  Assembly,  to  besmirch 
his  character.  His  outspoken  criticisms  and  denun- 
ciations had  become  intolerable  to  them,  so  they 
laid  a  trap  for  him,  but  he  was  not  caught.  His 
innate  rectitude  and  instinct  for  the  right  course 
saved  him,  as  it  has  saved  him  many  times  since.  I 
do  not  think  that  in  any  emergency  he  has  to  debate 
with  himself  long  as  to  the  right  course  to  be  pur- 
sued; he  divines  it  by  a  kind  of  infallible  instinct. 
His  motives  are  so  simple  and  direct  that  he  finds 
a  straight  and  easy  course  where  another  man, 
whose  eye  is  less  single,  would  flounder  and  hesitate. 

RARE   COMBINATION   OF   QUALITIES 

The  President  unites  in  himself  powers  and  quali- 
ties that  rarely  go  together.  Thus,  he  has  both 
physical  and  moral  courage  in  a  degree  rare  in  his- 
tory. He  can  stand  calm  and  unflinching  in  the  path 
of  a  charging  grizzly,  and  he  can  confront  with  equal 
36 


coolness  and  determination  the  predaceous  cor- 
porations and  money  powers  of  the  country. 

He  unites  the  qualities  of  the  man  of  action  with 
those  of  the  scholar  and  writer,  —  another  very  rare 
combination.  He  unites  the  instincts  and  accom- 
plishments of  the  best  breeding  and. culture  with 
the  broadest  democratic  sympathies  and  affiliations. 
He  is  as  happy  with  a  frontiersman  like  Seth 
Bullock  as  with  a  fellow  Harvard  man,  and  Seth 
Bullock  is  happy,  too. 

He  unites  great  austerity  with  great  good-nature. 
He  unites  great  sensibility  with  great  force  and  will 
power.  He  loves  solitude,  and  he  loves  to  be  in  the 
thick  of  the  fight.  His  love  of  nature  is  equaled  only 
by  his  love  of  the  ways  and  marts  of  men. 

He  is  doubtless  the  most  vital  man  on  the  conti- 
nent, if  not  on  the  planet,  to-day.  He  is  many-sided, 
and  every  side  throbs  with  his  tremendous  life  and 
energy;  the  pressure  is  equal  all  around.  His  inter- 
ests are  as  keen  in  natural  history  as  in  economics, 
in  literature  as  in  statecraft,  in  the  young  poet  as 
in  the  old  soldier,  in  preserving  peace  as  in  preparing 
for  war.  And  he  can  turn  all  his  great  power  into 
the  new  channel  on  the  instant.  His  interest  in  the 
whole  of  life,  and  in  the  whole  life  of  the  nation, 
never  flags  for  a  moment.  His  activity  is  tireless. 
All  the  relaxation  he  needs  or  craves  is  a  change  of 
work.  He  is  like  the  farmer's  fields,  that  only  need 
a  rotation  of  crops.  I  once  heard  him  say  that  all 
37 


he  cared  about  being  President  was  just  "  the  big 
work." 

During  this  tour  through  the  West,  lasting  over 
two  months,  he  made  nearly  three  hundred  speeches ; 
and  yet  on  his  return  Mrs.  Roosevelt  told  me  he 
looked  as  fresh  and  unworn  as  when  he  left  home. 

SLEIGHING   AMONG   THE    GEYSERS 

We  went  up  into  the  big  geyser  region  with  the 
big  sleighs,  each  drawn  by  four  horses.  A  big  snow- 
bank had  to  be  shoveled  through  for  us  before  we 
got  to  the  Golden  Gate,  two  miles  above  Mammoth 
Hot  Springs.  Beyond  that  we  were  at  an  altitude 
of  about  eight  thousand  feet,  on  a  fairly  level  course 
that  led  now  through  woods,  and  now  through  open 
country,  with  the  snow  of  a  uniform  depth  of  four 
or  five  feet,  except  as  we  neared  the  "  formations," 
where  the  subterranean  warmth  kept  the  ground 
bare.  The  roads  had  been  broken  and  the  snow 
packed  for  us  by  teams  from  the  fort,  otherwise  the 
journey  would  have  been  impossible. 

The  President  always  rode  beside  the  driver. 
From  his  youth,  he  said,  this  seat  had  always  been 
the  most  desirable  one  to  him.  When  the  sleigh 
would  strike  the  bare  ground,  and  begin  to  drag 
heavily,  he  would  bound  out  nimbly  and  take  to 
his  heels,  and  then  all  three  of  us  —  Major  Pitcher, 
Mr.  Childs,  and  myself  —  would  follow  suit, 
sometimes  reluctantly  on  my  part.  Walking  at  that 
38 


SUNRISE    IN    YELLOWSTONE    PARK. 

From  stereograph,  copyright  1!XM,  by  Underwood  &  Underwood,  New  York. 


altitude  is  no  fun,  especially  if  you  try  to  keep  pace 
with  such  a  walker  as  the  President  is.  But  he  could 
not  sit  at  his  ease  and  let  those  horses  drag  him  in  a 
sleigh  over  bare  ground.  When  snow  was  reached, 
we  would  again  quickly  resume  our  seats. 

As  one  nears  the  geyser  region,  he  gets  the  impres- 
sion from  the  columns  of  steam  going  up  here  and 
there  in  the  distance  —  now  from  behind  a  piece  of 
woods,  now  from  out  a  hidden  valley  —  jthat  he  is 
approaching  a  manufacturing  centre,  or  a  railroad 
terminus.  And  when  he  begins  to  hear  the  hoarse 
snoring  of  "  Roaring  Mountain,"  the  illusion  is  still 
more  complete.  At  Norris's  there  is  a  big  vent  where 
the  steam  comes  tearing  out  of  a  recent  hole  in  the 
ground  with  terrific  force.  Huge  mounds  of  ice  had 
formed  from  the  congealed  vapor  all  around  it, 
some  of  them  very  striking. 

OLD    FAITHFUL 

The  novelty  of  the  geyser  region  soon  wears  off. 
Steam  and  hot  water  are  steam  and  hot  water  the 
world  over,  and  the  exhibition  of  them  here  did  not 
differ,  except  in  volume,  from  what  one  sees  by  his 
own  fireside.  The  "  Growler  "  is  only  a  boiling  tea- 
kettle on  a  large  scale,  and  "  Old  Faithful "  is  as  if 
the  lid  were  to  fly  off,  and  the  whole  contents  of  the 
kettle  should  be  thrown  high  into  the  air.  To  be 
sure,  boiling  lakes  and  steaming  rivers  are  not  com- 
mon, but  the  new  features  seemed,  somehow,  out 
39 


of  place,  and  as  if  nature  had  made  a  mistake.  One 
disliked  to  see  so  much  good  steam  and  hot  water 
going  to  waste;  whole  towns  might  be  warmed  by 
them,  and  big  wheels  made  to  go  round.  I  wondered 
that  they  had  not  piped  them  into  the  big  hotels 
which  they  opened  for  us,  and  which  were  warmed 
by  wood  fires. 

At  Norris's  the  big  room  that  the  President  and 
I  occupied  was  on  the  ground  floor,  and  was  heated 
by  a  huge  box  stove.  As  we  entered  it  to  go  to  bed, 
the  President  said,  "  Oom  John,  don't  you  think  it 
is  too  hot  here  ?  " 

"I  certainly  do,"  I  replied. 

"  Shall  I  open  the  window  ?  " 

"That  will  just  suit  me."  And  he  threw  the 
sash,  which  came  down  to  the  floor,  all  the  way  up, 
making  an  opening  like  a  doorway.  The  night  was 
cold,  but  neither  of  us  suffered  from  the  abundance 
of  fresh  air. 

The  caretaker  of  the  building  was  a  big  Swede 
called  Andy.  In  the  morning  Andy  said  that  beat 
him :  "  There  was  the  President  of  the  United  States 
sleeping  in  that  room,  with  the  window  open  to  the 
floor,  and  not  so  much  as  one  soldier  outside  on 
guard." 

The  President  had  counted  much  on  seeing  the 

bears  that  in  summer  board  at  the  Fountain  Hotel, 

but  they  were  not  yet  out  of  their  dens.  We  saw  the 

track  of  only  one,  and  he  was  not  making  for  the 

40 


hotel.  At  all  the  formations  where  the  geysers  are, 
the  ground  was  bare  over  a  large  area.  I  even  saw 
a  wild  flower  —  an  early  buttercup,  not  an  inch 
high  —  in  bloom.  This  seems  to  be  the  earliest 
wild  flower  in  the  Rockies.  It  is  the  only  fragrant 
buttercup  I  know. 

CAPTURING  A  MOUSE 

As  we  were  riding  along  in  our  big  sleigh  toward 
the  Fountain  Hotel,  the  President  suddenly  jumped 
out,  and,  with  his  soft  hat  as  a  shield  to  his  hand, 
captured  a  mouse  that  was  running  along  over  the 
ground  near  us.  He  wanted  it  for  Dr.  Merriam,  on 
the  chance  that  it  might  be  a  new  species.  While 
we  all  went  fishing  in  the  afternoon,  the  President 
skinned  his  mouse,  and*  prepared  the  pelt  to  be  sent 
to  Washington.  It  was  done  as  neatly  as  a  professed 
taxidermist  would  have  done  it.  This  was  the  only 
game  the  President  killed  in  the  Park.  In  relating 
the  incident  to  a  reporter  while  I  was  in  Spokane, 
the  thought  occurred  to  me,  Suppose  he  changes 
that  u  to  an  o,  and  makes  the  President  capture  a 
moose,  what  a  pickle  I  shall  be  in!  Is  it  anything 
more  than  ordinary  newspaper  enterprise  to  turn  a 
mouse  into  a  moose  ?  But,  luckily  for  me,  no  such 
metamorphosis  happened  to  that  little  mouse.  It 
turned  out  not  to  be  a  new  species,  as  it  should  have 
been,  but  a  species  new  to  the  Park. 

I  caught  trout  that  afternoon,  on  the  edge  of 
41 


steaming  pools  in  the  Madison  River,  that  seemed 
to  my  hand  almost  blood-warm.  I  suppose  they 
found  better  feeding  where  the  water  was  warm. 
On  the  table  they  did  not  compare  with  our  Eastern 
brook  trout. 

I  was  pleased  to  be  told  at  one  of  the  hotels  that 
they  had  kalsomined  some  of  the  rooms  with 
material  from  one  of  the  devil's  paint-pots.  It 
imparted  a  soft,  delicate,  pinkish  tint,  not  at  all 
suggestive  of  things  satanic. 

THE    MOUNTAIN   BLUEBIRD 

One  afternoon  at  Norris's,  the  President  and  I 
took  a  walk  to  observe  the  birds.  In  the  grove  about 
the  barns  there  was  a  great  number,  the  most  attrac- 
tive to  me  being  the  mountain  bluebird.  These 
birds  we  saw  in  all  parts  of  the  Park,  and  at  Norris's 
there  was  an  unusual  number  of  them.  How  blue 
they  were,  —  breast  and  all.  In  voice  and  manner 
they  were  almost  identical  with  our  bluebird.  The 
Western  purple  finch  was  abundant  here  also,  and 
juncos,  and  several  kinds  of  sparrows,  with  an  occa- 
sional Western  robin.  A  pair  of  wild  geese  were 
feeding  in  the  low,  marshy  ground  not  over  one 
hundred  yards  from  us,  but  when  we  tried  to  ap- 
proach nearer  they  took  wing.  A  few  geese  and 
ducks  seem  to  winter  in  the  Park. 

The  second  morning  at  Norris's,  one  of  our  team- 
sters, George  Marvin,  suddenly  dropped  dead 
42 


from  some  heart  affection,  just  as  he  had  finished 
caring  for  his  team.  It  was  a  great  shock  to  us  all. 
I  never  saw  a  better  man  with  a  team  than  he  was. 
I  had  ridden  on  the  seat  beside  him  all  the  day 
previous.  On  one  of  the  "  formations "  our  teams 
had  got  mired  in  the  soft,  putty-like  mud,  and  at 
one  time  it  looked  as  if  they  could  never  extricate 
themselves,  and  I  doubt  if  they  could  have,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  skill  with  which  Marvin  man- 
aged them.  We  started  for  the  Grand  Canon  up 
the  Yellowstone  that  morning,  and,  in  order  to 
give  myself  a  walk  over  the  crisp  snow  in  the  clear, 
frosty  air,  I  set  out  a  little  while  in  advance  of  the 
teams.  As  I  did  so,  I  saw  the  President,  accom 
panied  by  one  of  the  teamsters,  walking  hurriedly 
toward  the  barn  to  pay  his  last  respects  to  the  body 
of  Marvin.  After  we  had  returned  to  Mammoth 
Hot  Springs,  he  made  inquiries  for  the  young 
woman  to  whom  he  had  been  told  that  Marvin 
was  engaged  to  be  married.  He  looked  her  up,  and 
sat  a  long  time  with  her  in  her  home,  offering  his 
sympathy,  and  speaking  words  of  consolation.  The 
act  shows  the  depth  and  breadth  of  his  humanity. 

TRAVELING  ON  SKIS 

At  the  Canon  Hotel  the  snow  was  very  deep,  and 
had  become  so  soft  from  the  warmth  of  the  earth 
beneath,  as  well  as  from  the  sun  above,  that  we 
could  only  reach  the  brink  of  the  Canon  on  skis. 

43 


The  President  and  Major  Pitcher  had  used  skis 
before,  but  I  had  not,  and,  starting  out  without  the 
customary  pole,  I  soon  came  to  grief.  The  snow 
gave  way  beneath  me,  and  I  was  soon  in  an  awk- 
ward predicament.  The  more  I  struggled,  the  lower 
my  head  and  shoulders  went,  till  only  my  heels, 
strapped  to  those  long  timbers,  protruded  above 
the  snow.  To  reverse  my  position  was  impossible 
•till  some  one  came,  and  reached  me  the  end  of  a 
pole,  and  pulled  me  upright.  But  I  very  soon  got 
the  hang  of  the  things,  and  the  President  and  I 
quickly  left  the  superintendent  behind.  I  think  I 
could  have  passed  the  President,  but  my  manners 
forbade.  He  was  heavier  than  I  was,  and  broke  in 
more.  When  one  of  his  feet  would  go  down  half  a 
yard  or  more,  I  noted  with  admiration  the  skilled 
diplomacy  he  displayed  in  extricating  it.  The  tend- 
ency of  my  skis  was  all  the  time  to  diverge,  and 
each  to  go  off  at  an  acute  angle  to  my  main  course, 
and  I  had  constantly  to  be  on  the  alert  to  check  this 
tendency. 

Paths  had  been  shoveled  for  us  along  the  brink 
of  the  Canon,  so  that  we  got  the  usual  views  from 
the  different  points.  The  Canon  was  nearly  free 
from  snow,  and  was  a  grand  spectacle,  by  far  the 
grandest  to  be  seen  in  the  Park.  The  President  told 
us  that  once,  when  pressed  for  meat,  while  returning 
through  here  from  one  of  his  hunting  trips,  he  had 
made  his  way  down  to  the  river  that  we  saw  rushing 
44 


along  beneath  us,  and  had  caught  some  trout  for 
dinner.  Necessity  alone  could  induce  him  to  fish. 

Across  the  head  of  the  Falls  there  was  a  bridge 
of  snow  and  ice,  upon  which  we  were  told  that  the 
coyotes  passed.  As  the  season  progressed,  there 
would  come  a  day  when  the  bridge  would  not  be 
safe.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  if  the  coyotes 
knew  when  this  time  arrived. 

The  only  live  thing  we  saw  in  the  Canon  was  an 
osprey  perched  upon  a  rock  opposite  us. 

Near  the  falls  of  the  Yellowstone,  as  at  other 
places  we  had  visited,  a  squad  of  soldiers  had  their 
winter  quarters.  The  President  always  called  on 
them,  looked  over  the  books  they  had  to  read, 
examined  their-  housekeeping  arrangements,  and 
conversed  freely  with  them. 

In  front  of  the  hotel  were  some  low  hills  separated 
by  gentle  valleys.  At  the  President's  suggestion,  he 
and  I  raced  on  our  skis  down  those  inclines.  We  had 
only  to  stand  up  straight,  and  let  gravity  do  the 
rest.  As  we  were  going  swiftly  down  the  side  of  one 
of  the  hills,  I  saw  out  of  the  corner  of  my  eye  the 
President  taking  a  header  into  the  snow.  The  snow 
had  given  way  beneath  him,  and  nothing  could  save 
him  from  taking  the  plunge.  I  don't  know  whether 
I  called  out,  or  only  thought,  something  about  the 
downfall  of  the  administration.  At  any  rate,  the 
administration  was  down,  and  pretty  well  buried, 
but  it  was  quickly  on  its  feet  again,  shaking  off  the 
45 


snow  with  a  boy's  laughter.  I  kept  straight  on,  and 
very  soon  the  laugh  was  on  me,  for  the  treacherous 
snow  sank  beneath  me,  and  I  took  a  header,  too. 

"  Who  is  laughing  now,  Oorn  John  ?  "  called  out 
the  President. 

The  spirit  of  the  boy  was  in  the  air  that  day  about 
the  Canon  of  the  Yellowstone,  and  the  biggest  boy 
of  us  all  was  President  Roosevelt. 

HOMEWARD    BOUND 

The  snowT  was  getting  so  soft  in  the  middle  of  the 
day  that  our  return  to  the  Mammoth  Hot  Springs 
could  no  longer  be  delayed.  Accordingly,  we  were 
up  in  the  morning,  and  ready  to  start  on  the  home 
journey,  a  distance  of  twenty  miles,  by  four  o'clock. 
The  snow  bore  up  the  horses  well  till  mid-forenoon, 
when  it  began  to  give  way  beneath  them.  But  by 
very  careful  management  we  pulled  through  with- 
out serious  delay,  and  were  back  again  at  the  house 
of  Major  Pitcher  in  time  for  luncheon,  being  the 
only  outsiders  who  had  ever  made  the  tour  of  the 
Park  so  early  in  the  season. 

A  few  days  later  I  bade  good-by  to  the  President, 
who  went  on  his  way  to  California,  while  I  made 
a  loop  of  travel  to  Spokane,  and  around  through 
Idaho  and  Montana,  and  had  glimpses  of  the  great, 
optimistic,  sunshiny  West  that  I  shall  not  soon 
forget. 


